Only Dreaming
by Erysimum
Summary: 'Sometimes Kakashi thinks he's going mad. That would explain the dreams.' Spoilers for Kakashi Gaiden.


_This is a work of derivative fiction. All characters and the world in which they live are the property of Masashi Kishimoto._

**Only Dreaming**

Sometimes Kakashi thinks he's going mad.

That would explain the dreams. They can only be the dreams of a lunatic.

It's the loss that's made him the way he is, that's for sure.

_no, don't say loss -_

He hates that word, hates it especially when people say "I'm sorry for your loss," like they've just been misplaced, like if he hadn't been so clumsy they would still be alive. Like it's Kakashi's fault they're dead.

Maybe it is his fault, and it's not the loss turning him crazy but the guilt. He hears their voices a lot. He can try to ignore them in the daytime; if he keeps himself busy they don't talk to him so often.

But they don't leave him alone at all after the sun dips below the horizon.

* * *

><p>Obito haunts his dreams almost every night, looking as Kakashi imagines he would've looked had he lived past the age of thirteen. He's different - taller, stronger, calmer - but Kakashi would recognise him even without those idiotic goggles. He has the same spiky blue-black hair; the same smile, creasing up the corners of his eyes; the same carefree but defensive stance that makes Kakashi want to both hit him and hold him at once.<p>

The dreams are nearly always the same.

Kakashi, drink in hand, is sitting at some street bar - the sight of which in real life is always infused with a creeping sense of dread - when he sees this strange adult Obito sauntering across the road towards him. Pausing in front of Kakashi's spot at the bar, Obito raises a hand in greeting - "Yo, Hatake" - that achingly familiar goofy grin falling into place, and Kakashi feels a wave of relief wash over him, every time.

_he's alive, Obito's alive! _

But when he gets to his feet the Uchiha's a child again, on his knees, his crushed, mangled body almost unrecognisable save for the orange-tinted goggles clamped over his collapsed eye sockets. Then the realisation, the sickening lurch of his stomach as though he's falling through air.

_no, Obito's dead, remember? Remember? _

He remembers. Every time. And by now he's desperately trying to wake himself up because he _knows, _he knows what's going to happen; he's seen it a thousand times over and it never gets any easier.

Sometimes all Obito will do is kneel in the crowded street and smile at Kakashi. But sometimes he stretches out a hand in front of him and says, "Give it back, Kakashi," with the blood dribbling down his chin, staining his teeth red; and then Kakashi wakes alone in the dark, sweating and shaking, Obito's Sharingan stinging painfully in his eye socket and feeling less and less like a part of him.

* * *

><p>The dreams of Rin are comforting, but few and far between. There's none of the terrifying repetitive realism of the Obito dreams; when Kakashi dreams about Rin, he dreams about her the way she was before they had to grow up, before fear and war and death became as integral to their lives as food and sleep. When living was more than just surviving.<p>

Kakashi only ever dreams of Rin as a child. He'd like to see what she'd look like as an adult, but no matter how hard he tries his imagination always lets him down.

She doesn't talk to him the way Obito does. Kakashi thinks he might like to hear her voice again, but instead he hovers at the edges of his mind and watches the scenes play out before him, frame by frame of spring summer autumn winter, endless, perpetual childhood.

They had wanted to think they were mature

_they were ninja, they weren't kids_

but the more Kakashi dreams the more he realises they were only playing at being grown up.

He dreams of Rin in different places. He might dream of Rin the provider, handing out home-made bento to her team the third time they'd met because she'd noticed that Obito was always hungry, and the Fourth couldn't cook to save his life, and Kakashi barely seemed to eat at all.

Maybe he'll dream of Rin the peacemaker, never hesitating to step in when Obito and Kakashi are arguing, Kakashi aloof, Obito prickly and childishly defensive but Rin's hands on their shoulders calmed them both down more than they'd ever admit.

Or maybe it'll be Rin cross-legged in a meadow of flowers, her hair falling down her back like fine silk, the kind of cliched image he claimed to despise. One of those precious moments when no one was bickering or fighting, when Obito had put down his kunai and Kakashi had put down his books and Rin had dragged them all out to some field and helped them forget they were _ninja, not kids. _

Obito's pushed his goggles up to his forehead and is looking at Rin, who in turn steals tentative glances at Kakashi, who isn't looking at either of them but up at the sky.

Dreamer-Kakashi sees the proud smile on their sensei's face and wonders why they were all so oblivious until the very end.

Kakashi likes to dream about Rin because while he's asleep he doesn't need to remember the bad parts. While he's asleep he can immerse himself in those scenes, in the simple things that used to make him happy. There's no need to force himself to wake because Obito's alive and Rin's alive and Sensei's alive, and it's not until he opens his eyes that he feels the hollow ache in his chest and remembers he's the only one left.

* * *

><p>He dreams about his father sometimes, though these dreams have faded as he's grown older. Father's face is fading too; it's been over two decades now and Kakashi wishes he had more to remember him by than a couple of dog-eared photographs tucked away in a drawer with his birth certificate.<p>

When he was a teenager, he'd dream about his father every night, sometimes so clearly that when he awoke he'd imagine he could almost smell the sharp odour of the natto Sakumo cooked for breakfast drifting into his room when he opened the door. And it would hurt all the more when he found the kitchen empty, last night's dishes

_and the night before and the night before that_

unwashed in the sink, the only food in the fridge an apple and a half-drunk carton of milk.

Now his father's face is blurring and Kakashi dreams that he pulls down his mask and looks at his reflection in the bright clean glass of the mirror, feels the contours of his face with his fingers. Father is standing behind him, hands pressing down on his shoulders and a proud, benign smile on his face, the benevolent god of Kakashi's early childhood.

"You're growing up to look just like me, Kakashi."

Indeed they look almost identical now, down to the faint lines at the corners of their tired eyes. Kakashi's growing up, growing old. He feels white and taut like paper stretched too tightly over a frame; any tighter and his skin might just tear.

He turns and Sakumo is bleeding, he's gutted himself like a fish when Kakashi wasn't looking and is spilling out onto the green linoleum kitchen tiles.

_wipe-clean tiles _

Sakumo is grey and slightly damp like something decomposing, and he pushes the bloody sword into Kakashi's hands. "It's yours, son."

Kakashi will say, "What have you done?" or, "Why?" or sometimes, "Don't leave me," and then his father is dead, a body, a thing, falling down onto Kakashi and crushing the breath from his lungs. There is a smell of formaldehyde and wet soil, Sakumo smells like the grave and Kakashi pushes him away and wakes retching and has to run to the bathroom to dry-heave into the toilet.

* * *

><p>After he wakes from his dreams, after the sweating shaking vomiting stage, Kakashi looks for distraction.<p>

He might mend a tear in his jacket, or clean the already spotless kunai hanging from his belt over the chair. Or switch on the bedside light and flick to chapter nine of_ Icha Icha Paradise_; this can usually be guaranteed to keep him occupied until the first weak strains of morning light creep through the window (he doesn't bother closing the blinds any more, since he's always up before the sun has a chance to wake him).

If he's in need of a better diversion - if the dream was a particularly awful one - his hand might slide beneath the waistband of his white boxers and he'll rock forward on his heels, biting his lip to keep the groans inside; the walls of the bachelor apartments are deceptively thin and it wouldn't be the first time he'd woken Gai next door.

He tries not to think of the subjects of his dreams while he does this; the idea of jerking off over the dead seems grossly distasteful to Kakashi and he prefers to picture someone like Genma, someone sexy and funny and flirty and reassuringly, glaringly alive. Or maybe that hot little Academy teacher he's seen eating ramen with Naruto. Someone to make Kakashi feel real, someone far removed from the horrors of his past, though doubtless every ninja in Konoha has suffered their own personal torment.

He doesn't cry, or scream and break things. He's a ninja. He's a ninja and a man and he knows better than to fall apart over what has been, what might be.

He can't change the past. He can't predict the future. Better to keep his eyes dry and deal with the present because in the end, surely, it is the present that matters. The here and now. It is being alive; Kakashi is alive, and they are not, they are dead and cold, long buried. He's only dreaming.

But no matter how many times he repeats it

_only dreaming, only dreaming, only fucking dreaming_

it doesn't seem to change anything. He had thought the difference between life and death was greater than this, had thought there was more separating the dead from the living than the act of falling asleep. But sometimes they seem more alive than he feels, and if only he could reach out and touch them he might find skin and nails and hair and a wet warm mouth curved in a smile against his fingertips. Sometimes he wakes with his arm outstretched in front of him and his hand closing on thin air.

* * *

><p>Sometimes Kakashi thinks he's going mad. Other times he thinks the dreams are the only things keeping him sane.<p>

He knows grief has made him the way he is. But maybe grief is also stopping him from breaking down completely. If he didn't have the company of the dead

_the lost_

he'd probably be lost himself by now.

At least while he has the dreams, hateful, painful, terrifying dreams, at least he isn't alone.

* * *

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